Salem Political Snark

Kansas votes for abortion rights. Good news for Democrats.

Being an avid Democrat, I needed this. A big win for abortion rights in Kansas today. Yes, Kansas. A decidedly red state. 

A Washington Post headline buoyed my liberal spirits.

Political prognosticators were saying the vote in Kansas would be close. Actually, it wasn't. 

This bodes well for Democrats in the November midterms.

The Kansas legislature, dominated by Republicans, put this constitutional amendment question on the ballot in what they thought would be a low-turnout primary election, hoping that Kansas voters would sleepwalk their way to approving a change to the state's constitution that would take away a woman's private right to choose an abortion.

But the people of Kansas woke up and smelled the risk to freedom that the constitutional amendment posed. 

Sure, it remains to be seen how big an impact abortion rights will have in the midterms, since abortion won't be a single issue being voted on, as it was in Kansas today. Yet it sure seems that if Democrats play their cards right, they can lead voters to see that electing Republicans means trashing abortion rights.

So things are looking up for Democrats. They've had some successes in Washington D.C. recently.

Passage of a bill to bolster American computer chip manufacturing. Agreement with Joe Manchin on a bill to fight climate change, lower prescription drug prices, and do other good stuff. Killing of the Al Qaeda leader via a drone strike in Afghanistan. 

Polls show that Democrats have a better chance of keeping control of the Senate, thanks to some weak, and very extreme, Republican candidates. The House still seems likely to shift to the GOP, but this isn't guaranteed. 

(Nothing in politics is.)

Up in Washington state, at the moment two Republican House members who voted for Trump's impeachment are leading their Trump-backed opponents. Washington has an open top-two primary, where the two candidates who get the most votes advance to the general election, regardless of party.

Nice to see Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse in the GOP lead. I'd prefer to have a Democrat win in November. Since this is unlikely given the nature of their districts, returning these two non-Trumpist Republicans to Congress is the next best thing.

Anyone who still supports Trump is a democracy-hater

If there was any doubt that Donald Trump is the worst president in American history, the rock-solid findings of the January 6 committee have put that doubt to rest.

I haven't watched all of my recording of tonight's primetime hearing by the committee into Trump's 187 minutes of utter inaction following the insurrection at the nation's capitol. But I listened to about an hour while driving around, and looked at some of the hearing when I returned home.

It's amazing that there's anyone in the United States who still backs Trump.

If any other president had done 1/1000 of the horrible stuff Trump did in his four years in office, and continues to do at the present moment, there's no way that former president would maintain any credibility, much less be seriously considered for a second term.

This shows how true the frog-in-boiling-water analogy is, even if I doubt a frog would truly remain in a pot while the water was heated to 212 degrees.

Bit by bit, day by day, we Americans were exposed to Trump's lies, incompetence, and malevolence so often, in so many ways, it became easy to view Trump as either a buffoon or a crazy uncle who somehow made it into the Oval Office.

But the January 6 committee has revealed that Trump is even worse than that. He's a lying incompetent malevolent crazy buffoon who also is a wanna-be authoritarian. Trump knew he lost the election to Joe Biden. 

Yet Trump worked hard to stay in office illegally, January 6, 2021 being his last gasp at trying to remain president by any means within his power. This is so un-American, so against the ideals of our constitutional democracy, anyone who continues to support Trump is a democracy-hater.

If that sounds harsh because you're someone who likes that Trump appointed three anti-abortion Supreme Court justices, cut taxes on corporations, imposed tariffs on China, or whatever, think about this.

While the nation's capitol was being attacked by an angry armed mob, chanting "Hang Mike Pence!", Trump sat for over three hours in the White House watching Fox News, ignoring the pleas of his deeply conservative staff to issue a statement decrying the violence and telling the mob to go home.

Is this how you want the Commander in Chief to behave? If a foreign power attacks the United States, are you really OK with the president doing nothing because he figures he'll benefit from the attack? And do you believe Trump would have stood up to Putin after Russia invaded Ukraine when Trump wasn't even willing to act against an insurrectionist crowd invading the capitol?

Sadly, most Republicans still back Trump, or at least aren't opposing him. This shows that the Republican Party has lost not only its moral compass, but also its political instincts. There's no longer any upside to supporting Trump.

It might help a candidate win a Republican primary. However, an ever-increasing share of American voters are beyond tired of Trump's attacks on democracy. There's a good chance they'll give Democrats more election wins this November than was being predicted just a few months ago.

My shameful fantasy involving Donald Trump

Hey, I survived the shame of telling my Donald Trump fantasy to a friend today, Jim, during our usual Sunday get-together at the Urban Grange coffeehouse in West Salem.

So I might as well share that not-so-secret aspect of my political self with the much vaster audience who read this Salem Political Snark blog. (I have a liberal interpretation of much vaster.)

I was describing to Jim the current status of my long-running depression about being a progressive Democrat in a time when everything seems to be going wrong for my side of the political spectrum.

Inflation is skyrocketing. Biden's approval rating is plummeting. Joe Manchin is tanking climate change legislation, along with voting rights, women's rights, and any other right that isn't favored by West Virginia voters. Republicans are poised to take control of the House and Senate. Oregon might end up with either an independent or Republican governor. The Supreme Court is acting like an arm of the Republican Party and has more important cases to rule on that will make conservatives ecstatic.

I told Jim that I was thinking of writing a blog post today about all the things that bother me about being a progressive in a country where liberal successes are few and far between.

But then I realized that my malaise could be described in a simpler fashion: I'm not feeling any positive energy from Democrats. The energy that permeated progressive hearts and minds in 2020 when Biden defeated Trump is gone. And it was more a joy that Biden wasn't Trump than any real excitement about Biden.

The last time I was truly enthused about a Democratic national leader was when Obama ran for president in 2008. Then it really did seem that so much progress was possible.

When Clinton ran against Trump in 2016, again it was the fact that Hillary wasn't Donald which was most appealing. And, that she could make history by becoming the nation's first female president. Didn't happen, of course, thanks to her damn email server and some stupid campaign mistakes.

So what I miss is the feeling of being part of a wave of political change that Republicans are surfing on right now.

I want to imbibe the positive energy that comes with having leaders of your political tribe who are enthusiastic about a vision for the future that actually seems possible to achieve with enough work and determination. 

Which gets me to my no-longer-secret shame about my Donald Trump fantasy. Understand: it's just a fantasy. Plus, when I allow the fantasy to enter my mind, it only lingers there for a few seconds. I try it on for size to see how it feels, then I discard it, because I don't like the feeling.

Well, more accurately I enjoy the emotional tone of the fantasy, but not its content. Here it is.

I imagine myself becoming a Trump devotee. I imagine myself embracing Republican positions on abortion, gun control, immigration, taxes, global warming -- the whole agenda that is tilting in the direction of conservatives these days. I no longer drive a Subaru Crosstrek. I drive a giant loud pickup belching diesel fumes with two big American flags whipping in the breeze as I terrorize electric cars.

In short, I imagine the energy and enthusiasm I'd feel if I traded in my progressive values, which are in a bear market currently, for the rising tide of conservatism that has had way more political victories recently, with more successes on the horizon.

Like I said, I enjoy the feeling of being part of a political movement that has the wind at its back with leaders who know how to energize members of that movement. But it only takes a few moments for me to realize that I could never jump ship and become a Republican. 

So I'm stuck with the Democratic Party. Which makes me feel listless at the moment. Hopefully my mood will improve when, as I strongly suspect will happen, some new younger leaders come forward with a lot more energy and vitality than Biden, Schumer, Pelosi, and Co. are able to muster.

Chaos is the real reason abortion rights have been lost

Like most Democrats, and indeed most Americans, I'm a strong supporter of abortion rights. The recent Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case which ruled that the Constitution protects a woman's right to choose an abortion, deeply irritates me.

So does the weak response of Democratic leaders in Washington, especially since the leaked draft Supreme Court decision gave Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer plenty of time to formulate plans for protecting abortion rights after the court gave a green light to about half the states banning abortion entirely.

Telling people, vote in November, is pretty much useless until that platitude is fleshed out with specifics.

Like, vote for these Democratic Senate candidates, because we need at least 52 Senators who are willing to do away with the filibuster, and vote for these Democratic House candidates, because they are the key to keeping control of both houses of Congress -- which is needed to pass a law making abortion legal in all 50 states.

Here's the thing, though. 

The best laid plans of politicians and political junkies like me usually are less powerful than a fundamental law of nature, chaos theory. Now, I readily admit that strictly speaking, chaos theory probably isn't exactly what I'm talking about here.

Maybe chance is a better word. However, chance implies randomness. Chaos theory is deterministic. Causes and effects rule the roost.

But with chaos, a small cause can have a large effect. Often this is termed the butterfly effect, as in a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can kick off atmospheric changes that multiply over time and can create a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico.

Currently there's lots of talk about how Republicans played the long game in pursuing their anti-abortion crusade. After decades of diligent hard work, now they're reaping the reward of their labors with the 5-4 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the three liberal justices and Roberts being in the minority against Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.

One vote on the Supreme Court did away with abortion rights. 

Let's take a plausible look at how different the makeup of the Supreme Court would be today if a few people had made different small decisions in the past that ended up, in a chaos theory fashion, causing a seismic shift in not only abortion rights, but other issues the conservative majority has been deciding, like gun control.

In 2000 George W. Bush beat Al Gore by 543 votes in Florida. Bush appointed two conservatives to the Supreme Court, Alito and Roberts. If any one of a number of things had happened differently in Florida, including the famous "butterfly ballot" that likely took lots of votes away from Gore, we would have had a Democratic president who could have appointed two liberals to the court. 

Barack Obama appointed two liberals to the court, Kagan and Sotomayor. But if Ruth Bader Ginsburg had decided to retire from the court during the time Obama was president and Democrats controlled the Senate, Obama could have appointed three liberals. 

Donald Trump appointed three conservatives to the court, Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch, after narrowly defeating Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. If Clinton hadn't decided to have her own email server while Secretary of State under Obama, "her emails" wouldn't have been a campaign issue, and Comey wouldn't have been able to make his infamous Justice Department pronouncement about new messages being found, shortly before the election.

So a few small events and choices led to the conservative Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe v. Wade. Of course, no one knew this at the time. It is only looking back that we can discern the hand of unpredictable chaos in today's news. 

Which means that at this moment we aren't able to know what chaotic forces are going to impact the 2022 midterms, 2024 presidential election, the war in Ukraine, how the debate over abortion plays out next, and so many other things that pundits pretend to be able to forecast, yet actually defy prediction.

 

Hating Russia, I now better understand why so many hate the United States

Before Putin invaded Ukraine, my attitude toward Russia was one of rather detached disinterest.

I knew that Russia wasn't our friend, Trump had some sort of fatal attraction toward the country, Putin was an authoritarian who killed dissidents/journalists he didn't like, and it had a lot of oil and gas.

But in no way did I hate Russia. Now I do. 

Not the Russian people. Just that portion of the Russian populace responsible for carrying out the invasion of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin. The oligarchs who support him. The Russian military. Anyone else in Russia who knows about the horrendous war crimes being carried out in Ukraine and still is OK with the invasion.

War is hell. Even when war is being conducted as it should be, with battles being fought by competing armies. War is far beyond hellish the way Russia is acting in Ukraine.

Kidnapping, torturing, killing, and raping civilians. Targeting schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, and other targets with no military value. Leveling entire cities through indiscriminate bombing. Failing to allow civilians to evacuate from areas being attacked by Russia.

Knowing what I do about Russian atrocities in Ukraine, there's no way I could ever go back to feeling even neutral about Russia. For the rest of my life I'll detest Russia, even if Putin ever is replaced (which likely will be with another authoritarian ruler).

I now better understand why the United States is disliked by so many people around the world. Yes, my country does a lot of good beyond our shores. But we've also done a lot of bad.

The Vietnam War was a disaster. Ditto the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, leaving aside the justified invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, but not the twenty-some years that followed. The United States has caused hundreds of thousands of people to be killed unnecessarily.

Those deaths have caused a lot of intense reactions. If members of your family have been killed in a drone attack aimed at an Al Qaeda leader, the death of those innocents is going to leave a gaping hole in your heart that can't be repaired.

Anger at the United States can be as justified as my anger at Russia, albeit with some important differences. The United States didn't have an official policy directing our military to commit war crimes, but it definitely appears that Russia does.

Our intentions in going to war also were more defensible, though I realize that many would disagree. As much as I disliked George W. Bush, I feel that he truly did want to see Iraq become a democracy, even thought the U.S. strategy to accomplish this was deeply flawed.

By contrast, Putin wants to conquer Ukraine just to expand the borders of Russia back into what used to be the Soviet Union. He has no lofty aim, just the exertion of raw power.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is much more publicized than any other conflict, thanks to smart phones and the courage of journalists who report on what's going on there. I suspect that if our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had been equally open to view, American atrocities would have been much more on display, though nowhere near to the degree of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Ukraine is fighting a righteous war against an unprovoked invasion by Russia. That gives them the moral high ground. I wish I could say that the United States always has occupied the same ethical territory in the wars we've fought recently, but I can't. 

So while in no way do I believe that we're as guilty of war crimes as Putin's Russia is, I now can empathize more strongly with those who hate the United States for our own wartime atrocities. 

If we make the mistake Zelensky did, we'll lose our democracy

I'm a huge fan of Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people. They've fought against Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine with amazing skill, valor, and determination. 

Zelensky

Since the war began on February 24, Zelensky has led his country almost perfectly. He inspires both Ukrainians and the entire freedom-loving world with his words and actions. And yet...

A special report in the May 9 issue of TIME magazine, "Inside Zelensky's World," describes how close a bad decision by Zelensky came to imperiling Ukraine in the first few days of the war.

The error was ignoring the obvious evidence that Russia was planning to invade Ukraine. The story says about the morning of the invasion:

For months Zelensky had downplayed warnings from Washington that Russia was about to invade. Now he registered the fact that an all-out war had broken out, but could not yet grasp the totality of what it meant. "Maybe these words sound vague or pompous," says Stefanchuk. "But we sensed the order of the world collapsing."

Until I read the TIME story, I wasn't aware of the disaster that almost befell Zelensky and Ukraine in those first few days of the war, since Ukraine hadn't prepared for the invasion.

Beyond the checkpoints is the government district [in Kyiv], known as the Triangle, which Russian forces tried to seize at the start of the invasion.

...It soon became clear the presidential offices were not the safest place to be. The military informed Zelensky that Russian strike teams had parachuted into Kyiv to kill or capture him and his family.

...As Ukrainian troops fought the Russians back in the streets, the presidential guard tried to seal the compound with whatever they could find. A gate at the rear entrance was blocked with a pile of police barricades and plywood boards, resembling a mound of junkyard scrap more than a fortification.

...As night fell that first evening, gunfights broke out around the government quarter. Guards inside the compound shut the lights and brought bulletproof vests and assault rifles for Zelensky and about a dozen of his aides. Only a few knew how to handle the weapons.

One was Oleksiy Arestovych, a veteran of Ukraine's military intelligence service. "It was an absolute madhouse," he told me. "Automatics for everyone." Russian troops, he says, made two attempts to storm the compound. Zelensky later told me that his wife and children were still there at the time.

Reading this got me to thinking about the parallel between Zelensky denying the evidence that Russia was about to invade his country, which left Ukraine worse off than if preparations to repel an invasion had been taking place during those months of denial, and how people in the United States are failing to grasp the evidence that Republicans are busily working to undermine our democracy.

So far the pitiful response of Congressional Democrats and President Biden to GOP efforts to take away voting rights, set the stage for overturning the 2024 presidential election if a Democrat wins, and stack the Supreme Court with highly partisan right-wing justices willing to stand by and allow our democracy to be trashed is painfully like the frantic efforts to protect Zelensky's compound.

Piles of barricades and boards wouldn't have been enough to stop Russian troops without a combination of Russian incompetence and Ukrainian fortitude. Yet too many people in the United States are hoping, as Zelensky did, that the worst isn't going to happen, even though there's lots of evidence that it will.

Two of those people, sadly, are Democratic Senators Manchin and Sinema, who are standing in the way of doing away with the archaic Senate filibuster that's preventing Democrats from taking steps to protect our democracy in the short time remaining when this can occur, since Republicans likely will take back at least the House in November of this year, and perhaps the Senate also.

For months Zelensky looked at Russian troops massing on the border of Ukraine and thought, there's no way Putin would order a full-scale invasion of my country. 

For years too many Democrats have been looking at Republican efforts to undermine our elections and thinking, there's no way Trump and his GOP cronies would order a dismantling of our democracy. 

The next thing Zelensky knew, his guards were fighting Russian paratroopers at the gates of his compound. What I fear is that the American people are going to discount warnings of a Republican assault on democracy until that battle has gone too far to stop it from succeeding.

Once abortion is illegal, gay marriage and contraception could follow

Unless you're living in a news desert where word of the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion overturning abortion rights hasn't reached yet, likely you're either outraged or ecstatic -- depending on how you view abortion. 

Me, I'm in the outraged camp.

I strongly favor a woman's right to choose what medical care she gets. That leads me to be upset at what anti-abortion zealots and their enablers in the Republican Party have wrought: the imminent doing-away of a constitutional right to an abortion that has been the law of the land since 1973, almost 50 years.

Even worse, there's good reason to believe that the Supreme Court won't stop with doing away with the constitutional right to an abortion, but could reverse other rights also, such as same-sex marriage and contraception. So says a piece in The Atlantic, "Alito's Plan to Repeal the 20th Century."

However, listening to liberal Congressional politicians speak today about how they're going to work to codify a right to an abortion in a law to be introduced soon leaves me with a bad feeling also. 

After all, these are the same Democratic politicians who have been promising to pass voting rights legislation because that too deserved urgent attention. Yet nothing has happened with voting rights. Just as nothing has happened with police reform, immigration policy, and other progressive priorities.

Since there aren't 51 Democratic votes for doing away with the filibuster in the Senate, and no abortion rights bill can get 60 votes, the chance of such a bill passing is essentially zero. Which raises the question: why didn't Democrats enshrine the right to an abortion in legislation when they had the chance at a time when this was possible since 1973, assuming it ever was?

As much as I dislike today's Republican Party, I give the GOP credit for fighting tough on what it deems important. Yes, they fight dirty, but that got them a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court and gerrymandered districts all across the country that now provide them with a solid base of support.

Democrats are good at expressing outrage at Republican nastiness. They're not nearly as skilled at responding in kind to cure the ills that the GOP is inflicting on our country.

Below I've shared some tweets from my Twitter feed that I especially liked out of the many views about the Supreme Court leaked draft order that I read today. You'll see that a woman who clerked at the Court has changed her mind about who likely sent the draft order to Politico reporters.

Yesterday she thought it was a liberal law clerk or justice who wanted to raise the alarm at how five conservative justices were poised to not just restrict abortion rights but do away with them entirely by reversing the Court's previous rulings on abortion.

But now she leans toward the notion that it was a conservative law clerk or justice who sought to lock in Justice Alito's strong, even harsh, draft order, since it appears that Chief Justice Roberts may have made some progress in finding support for having abortion rights pared back, yet not eliminated entirely.

Now that will be more difficult, since any weakening of the draft order will infuriate anti-abortion activists who want abortion illegal in any state that wishes it so, and ideally in the entire country -- which could happen if Republicans get control of both the House and Senate in 2024, along with the presidency.

So any conservative justice in favor of softening Alito's language will find this more difficult to do, given that the draft order has been publicized. Anyway, we may never know who leaked it. It just won't be surprising if it turns out to be, say, one of Justice Thomas' law clerks.

Here's the tweets.

Parents don't get to choose the version of American history they like best

Until I read a story by Jill Lepore in the March 21, 2022 issues of The New Yorker, "The Parent Trap: How school fights, from evolution to anti-racism, pit parents against the state," I failed to understand some key points about the current controversy over teaching American history in public schools.

Quite a few conservative states are passing so-called parents-rights bills that allow parents more leeway than they've enjoyed before to complain about teaching regarding slavery, systemic racism, and such that goes against the grain of a view of American history that papers over these subjects in favor of a rosier picture of the values our country was founded on.

What Lepore does in her story is put this current debate into a broader context of how people have objected to other subjects taught in schools, notably evolution. She writes:

When anti-evolutionists condemned "evolution," they meant something as vague and confused as what people mean today, when they condemn "critical race theory." 

Anti-evolutionists weren't simply objecting to Darwin, whose theory of evolution had been taught for more than half a century. They were objecting to the whole Progressive package, including its philosophy of human betterment, its model of democratic citizenship, and its insistence on the interest of the state in free and equal public education as a public good that prevails over the private interests of parents.

There is no such thing as the history of the United States. Rather, there are many histories, each with their own viewpoint. History always involves interpretation. But there are worse histories and better histories. 

Lepore quotes a 1943 Supreme Court ruling that struck down a West Virginia law requiring schoolchildren to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance: "Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard."

Lepore adds a comment: "History isn't a pledge; it's an argument."

I really liked this passage from the story where Lepore argues that schools should teach not just white American history, or Black American history, but the history of all those who have made our country a wonderful admixture of nationalities and cultures.

A century ago, parents who objected to evolution were rejecting the entire Progressive package. Today's parents' rights groups, like Moms for Liberty, are objecting to a twenty-first-century Progressive package. 

They're balking at compulsory vaccination and masking, and some of them do seem to want to destroy public education. They're also annoyed at the vein of high-handedness, moral crusading, and snobbery that stretches from old-fashioned Progressivism to the modern kind, laced with the same contempt for the rural poor and the devoutly religious.

But across the past century, behind parents' rights, lies another unbroken strain: some Americans' fierce resistance to the truth that, just as all human beings share common ancestors biologically, all Americans have common ancestors historically.

A few parents around the country may not like their children learning that they belong to a much bigger family -- whether it's a human family or an American family -- but the idea of public education is dedicated to the cultivation of that bigger sense of covenant, toleration, and obligation.

In the end, no matter what advocates of parents' rights say, and however much political power they might gain, public schools don't have a choice; they've got to teach, as American history, the history not only of the enslaved Africans who arrived in Virginia in 1619 and the English families who sailed to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620, but also that of the Algonquian peoples, who were already present in both places, alongside the ongoing stories of all other Indigenous peoples, and those who came afterward -- the Dutch, German, Spanish, Mexican, Chinese, Italian, Cambodian, Guatemalan, Japanese, Sikh, Hmong, Tunisian, Afghani, everyone.

That's why parents don't have a right to choose the version of American history they like best, a story of only their own family's origins. Instead, the state has an obligation to welcome children into that entire history, their entire inheritance.

No reasonable person should be a Republican

Being a Republican used to be a respectable political position.

My mother was an avid Republican. Until I went to college, I shared her conservatism. I grew up reading National Review. William F. Buckley was only one of numerous noted Republican intellectuals. Back then, Republicans believed in conserving the environment, which fit with their conservative principles.

Now, in the Age of Trump, Republicans should rename themselves as the Know-Nothing Party. (Yeah, I know, that name was taken in the 1850's, but it's time to resurrect it.)

There's so many examples of Republican craziness, I'm going to limit myself to two recent instances that have caught my eye.

The Senate confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court nomination put Republican weaknesses on full display. I watched enough of the questioning by Republican Senators to be able to say with complete confidence that each and every one of them is either clueless or a liar.

Or, both.

Jackson completely demolished their pitiful attempts to make her sentencing of people convicted of child pornography offenses into a political weapon.

Every knowledgeable neutral legal observer, including the American Bar Association, has found that Jackson is both eminently qualified and has sentenced child pornography criminals in accord with accepted standards.

But that didn't stop Ted Cruz, John Hawley, Lindsey Graham, and other Republican senators from shamelessly lying about Jackson's record as a judge, which clearly is exemplary.

Their hypocrisy is breathtaking, since they ignored credible accusations of sexual misconduct against Bret Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court nomination hearings, while trying to make Ketanji Brown Jackson look like a pedophile-lover, an obvious attempt to curry favor with the insane fantasy of QAnon followers that leading Democrats are engaged in sex trafficking of young children.

Clarence and Ginni Thomas

Then there's the breaking news that Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,  sent text messages to Trump's Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, urging him to overturn Biden's free and fair election victory so Trump could remain office.

In the weeks between the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent a barrage of text messages imploring President Donald J. Trump’s chief of staff to take steps to overturn the vote, according to a person with knowledge of the texts.

...The text messages, most of which were written by Ms. Thomas, represent the first evidence that she was directly advising the White House as it sought to overturn the election. In fact, in her efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power, Ms. Thomas effectively toggled between like-minded members of the executive and legislative branches, even as her husband, who sits atop the judiciary branch that is supposed to serve as a check on the other branches of government, heard election-related cases.

Pretty big deal. The Republican wife of a Republican Supreme Court Justice is engaging in an effort to illegally hand the presidential election to Republican Donald Trump. Imagine if the spouse of a Democratic Supreme Court Justice had attempted this sort of crap.

There would be cries from conservatives that the Justice should resign, or at least recuse themselves from any Supreme Court cases involving election law. But almost certainly there will be silence from the cowardly Republicans in Congress, because they are afraid of offending their Putin-adoring authoritarian-wanna-be, Trump.

For sure there are many decent, reasonable Republicans. However, so long as they choose to remain in their party, they're supporting underhanded Republican efforts to subvert democracy and undo many of the rights supported by a majority of Americans, like same-sex marriage and abortion.

Fear of WW III can't stop us from battling Putin with all our might

Just before I started to write this blog post, I got a reminder that it's time to use CleanMyMac, a utility program I've been using without thinking where the creators come from.

Now I know. This message popped up when I opened CleanMyMac.

We stop selling our products to users from the Russian Federation and Belarus with this release. Ukraine is our home, and we want to protect it in every way we can.

 

Despite the war, CleanMyMac is stable, and our team is safe. We try to stay calm, focused, and optimistic for a peaceful future of independent Ukraine. And we are deeply grateful for all the incredible messages of support you've sent our way.

 

Слава Україні 🇺🇦

I was moved.

Like so many other Americans, and people all around the world, I'm hugely supportive of Ukraine and deeply irritated at the war crimes being committed by Putin's forces following Russia's invasion of Ukraine without provocation. 

Today I heard a report that a Russian tank killed 56 people at an elderly care home, taking 15 people hostage.

Ukraine's claims have not been independently verified but were tweeted out by Ukraine's State Service of Special Communications.

In a statement, it said: "56 people were killed in Kreminna, Luhansk Oblast - the occupiers shot from a tank (a) home for the elderly.

"Russians fired at it. Cynically and deliberately. They adjusted the tank, put it in front of the house, and started firing."

The statement went on: "Those who lived to their old age in the house - 56 people - died on the spot. The survivors, 15 people, were abducted by the occupiers and taken to the occupied territory in Svatove to the regional geriatric boarding school."

Many thousands of other civilians, including women and children, have been killed by Russia's indiscriminate shelling of residential areas in Ukrainian cities. 

By and large, I'm pleased with how the Biden administration has handled the Ukraine crisis. However, I still feel that President Biden needs to act more forcefully against Putin.

What irks me the most is talk that the United States can't support sending Polish MiG airplanes to Ukraine because this could "provoke" Putin. 

Wow.

Putin is bombing apartment complexes. He's shelling places where civilians are sheltering against Russian artillery fire and missiles. He's abducting Ukrainians who were forced to enter Russia after fleeing Ukraine and sending them to Siberia (literally). He's using hypersonic missiles for the first time in warfare.

Putin clearly isn't worried about provoking the United States and our allies, yet we're supposed to worry about provoking him?

Today the Secretary General of NATO refused to say on Meet the Press whether NATO would consider Russia's use of chemical weapons in Ukraine a red line that would merit a NATO response. 

Biden administration officials keep saying that the United States can't do everything possible to aid Ukraine because Russia is a nuclear power. That's ridiculous.

The United States also is a nuclear power. Putin should be as afraid of us using nuclear weapons as we're afraid of Russia using nuclear weapons. 

Mutually Assured Destruction is still the only viable strategy for preventing World War III. That was the case in the Cold War. It's still the case in this Ukraine hot war. I'm not saying that the United States should fight directly against Russian forces.

A no-fly zone enforced by our country doesn't make sense, since this could entail shooting down Russian airplanes.

However, there's no reason we can't aid Ukraine by giving them every possible type of conventional weapon, including MiG fighters that would be supplied by our Eastern European allies in exchange for the United States replacing those planes with newer fighter jets.

And Ukraine should get our most advanced ground-to-air missile systems, even if this requires training by American advisors. Putin is trying to bring in mercenaries from Syria, Libya, and perhaps other nations to aid in Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Belarus troops also are poised to fight in Ukraine on behalf of Russia.

So why should the United States be reluctant to have MiGs flown into Ukraine from an American airbase in Germany, or have a small number of American military advisors engaged in noncombat roles in Ukraine?

Putin only responds to force arrayed against him. As an ex-KGB officer, he is skilled at sensing weakness in an adversary.

Right now, I'm worried that the United States is coming across as weak to Putin. That will only lead to more bloodshed, since an emboldened Putin is much more dangerous than a Putin who fears even stronger military aid being sent to Ukraine.